


Eleventh Time's the Charm

by susiephalange



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ?!, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Crowley Being Crowley, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff, Murder, Reincarnation, Time Travel, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 19:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiephalange/pseuds/susiephalange
Summary: Living a dreary, slow life working in a diner-slash-cafe in a terrible small town, waiting for your life to start and soulmate to walk into your life...it happens. You meet the guy. And thus, the story begins.





	Eleventh Time's the Charm

**Author's Note:**

> I only realise after uploading this that it's sort of based off the story-line from _Fallen_ by Lauren Kate. Also, I haven't seen any of the recent things from the newer seasons (I'm still on S10, spare me spoilers my pals), so this is based around what I know of Crowley. 
> 
> Ooh also, if you're confused by the tags, here's what happens...you kind of witness a murder about to happen (and hear it happen too). But it's not too graphic! I just tagged it that because I don't want to upset anyone by not tagging it as that, and to be honest, it's a messed up thing to write about and I got kind of spooked writing it. 
> 
> Anyways! On with the fic!

Everyone has someone. Your someone, was perhaps, preoccupied. Soulmates were a thing, and while it was good for the 99% of people who had their shit together, you did not have yours together, and lived out your days working days at the diner, nights working on your online education. Poor as hell, living out of a caravan in a nobody town’s trailer park, you rarely saw anyone new who wasn’t a regular at _Bean There, Donut That_. Apparently, when people met their One, everything sort of clicks. Comes into focus. You’d never had that happen with Joe who loved maple syrup more than life, or the coffee addicts with their stamp-cards.

One night, it might have happened. You’re not sure, because you were quite out of it. There was an essay due for your online university, and you’d left the only copy of it on your USB that was attached to your spare set of keys at work. You were rushing around, practically screeching for Zach the busboy to toss them to you. Zach was never good at throwing things, especially projectiles that weren’t footballs. Thus, a strange bearded patron was hit on the back of his head with your _Punisher_ USB and keys.

“Bloody –,” he mutters.

But before he can blink, you scoop up your keys from behind his chair where he’s sipping pink milk, and give a wan, apologetic smile and dash out. “Sorry, man!” You call out over your shoulder, and dash out to your beat-up pickup truck.

You didn’t notice the clarity of the night until you’d uploaded the final essay for your exams and hit _send_. With the laptop shut, the lamplight inside the caravan low, stars littering the night sky outside the window brighter than ever before, you sit there, breathless. You don’t think it’s to do with Zach smacking your keys into that bloke until you’re dunking a camomile teabag into your _Sherlock_ cup an hour later. Checking your watch, you see the diner has a few minutes before it’s closed for business, and with your old phone, call them up.

“Hello, _Bean There, Donut That_ , it’s Keith.” Another co-worker, works the grill.

You sigh. “Hey, Keith, it’s __________.” You scratch your nose, and add, “Sorry it’s late, I was just wondering if you know who that guy was who came in today. Emr, earlier. When I was in.”

You hear Keith make a noise, and then, “Oli? He’s one of your regulars.”

 _Oli? No._ “No, no, not one of my regulars…the other guy. Uh, beard? Older? I don’t know, I was in a rush. Zach hit him with my keys.”

The phone rustles, “__________, hey, did you submit that paper?” You hear Ned, the owner of the diner on the phone. He’s the type of guy who’d make you feel like absolute shit if you were late to work, but would be all Suburban Dad if someone was out to wrong you. “I heard what you and Keith were saying. Yes, we had a new patron come in, I didn’t catch his name.”

You sigh, nowhere closer to finding out if he was the guy. “Did he say he’d stick around town?”

“Didn’t get that either. But you’re working the morning shift anyway, so you can see for yourself.” Ned reminds you, and clicks his tongue into the phone. “Okay, diner’s closed. See you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, __________.”

You hung up. Brushed your teeth, straightened the picture frame above the bed of Vincent van Gough’s sunflowers, switched off the lamp. Your head was still spinning. For once in your life when you needed the clouded thoughts, all you could think about was the flash of dark green eyes as you ran out of the diner.

* * *

He was back again. You were wiping your hands on your apron when he came in the door like a warm breeze, clicking the pen to get it to write _vanilla milkshake_ for the nice young couple on a date. Your breath caught in your throat, he stilled. But Keith’s voice called out for you over the usual din of the diner, and you gave the new order for the kitchen to make. You didn’t realise that he was standing beside you until you could smell him – a pleasant scent, a hint of chai and burned earth – and he cleared his throat.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” He said, an accent thick, like cold butter lumpy over toast. Refusing to melt, insisting to stay in a brave new world.

You turn toward him, so he can read the name badge that sits above your breast. “I’m actually going to say sorry for hitting you with my keys yesterday,” you preface. “So, don’t take it out on Zach.”

He _tsks,_ “Please. It’s all in his lack of coordination…none of your fault. Can I buy you a drink?”

“This – isn’t a bar,” you tell him. Ned eyes you over the bench, and motions to a new group of people who have been sitting for a while. “Sorry, I’m working right now. But I’d love coffee. If you’re into that. After I’m –,”

“__________!” Ned calls out, annoyed.

“Coming!” you reply, and spare a glance to your current conversation. “I finish at midday.”

He smiles. “I’ll see you then, darling.”

By the time you’re back from taking the order from the new table, delivering the milkshake to the other, and fixing the split bill (Zach is terrible at math, but he’ll never admit it) not on your area, you find a napkin where you’d been speaking to the guy sitting there. In a sort of half cursive script, reads, _The name’s Crowley._ Underneath the napkin, you find, is a handful of quarters and half dollars, and a folded piece of paper, with more writing that this time, says, _Coffee’s on me._

By the time your shift has ended, you only remember the coffee plans when your fingers brush on the loose change in your pocket. Instead of ordering two cappuccinos from Zach, you opt for the takeaway joint down the road. It isn’t until you’ve got the two cups in your hands until you see him, Crowley again, strolling toward you like he owns the small town.

“Hello, darling.”

You pass him his cup, and grab a sachet of sugar from the vendor. “Hello yourself. Got you a black coffee.”

He smiles, taking a sip from the paper cup, and content, he sighs. “ _Mm_. Like my soul.”

You walk in silence together, the small town’s area painfully small at that moment. It was a short walk to anywhere, really – with a police station caring for only less than a thousand people – the main street had all the places needed on it, be it clothes, food, money, sex. The cemetery around the corner. The school wasn’t too far away, either, and neither was the park. You gravitated toward the location of the latter, leading the mysterious man toward the empty commons and plastic playground.

“I think you’re my soulmate,” you tell him, closing the gate to the empty play area behind you.

He frowns at your wording. “What makes you think I’m your soulmate?” He questions, draining his coffee all at once, like a craven caffeine addict. “I could be a married man, with children and a dog named Pollyanna.”

“You’re not, though.” You tilt your head. “You’re a businessman.”

He raises a brow. “And? You’re a budding ancient historian, and that doesn’t erase the fact that I could be those things.”

You laugh, and take another sip of your coffee. “I just have a feeling, man.” You look over the park, and slowly, taking another sip, embrace the silence of the park, and the lack of bustle as opposed to that of work. “Just…everything’s _clearer_ now.”

“Okay, slow down there, Johnny Nash. You think I’m your soulmate because you don’t need prescription glasses anymore?” The way Crowley said it made your point sound silly, if not puerile. “…I’m just a guy passing through town.”

You pitch your half-drunken coffee into a bin nearby, and when it misses the rim, go to put it in the bin. “You’re making this really hard on me, you know?” You hum, annoyed. “I’ve lived a really shit life, and I’ve always known that there were soulmates. Heck, even Ned has one, and he’s an ass to me.

Crowley lifted a brow at the latter remark, but didn’t question it.

“I’ve barely known anyone my whole freakin’ life! Everyone I meet _could_ be the One, but they’re not, but you – _you_ walk in like you’ve always been there, and just go and tell me it’s not real? Screw you, man.” You swipe a tear from the corner of your eye, and storm off. Leaving him standing in an empty playground, alone. 

* * *

It’s two months later when you get your results back from the online university. It’s a stressful two weeks, and you take every damn shift at the diner you can, saving every penny and dime until Ned approaches you to ask if you’re okay, which doesn’t shock you as much as it really could. He’s nice, under all the sternness and responsibilities he has.

But you’re sitting in your caravan, staring at the screen of your laptop. You’re not observing the tab abandoned on the upper right side of the screen, reading that you’ve managed to save over eight thousand dollars in the last four years. You’re not seeing at the background image of your laptop, a still from _My Neighbour Totoro_. Nope. You’re staring at the marks the university have sent through, sitting in your inbox.

 _High distinction_.

You almost whoop for joy when the power cuts out of your caravan. It’s not the first time it’s happened before, what, with the electricity company often having problems out in the middle of nowhere where you live, and calmly, you reach for your cell phone for the torch app. But in the dark, you can’t see it, and all the clarity you got those months ago is useless on moonless nights. Blindly, you walk to the entrance of the outside world, going to see what had happened.

You hear grunting, clash of metal on metal, animalistic groans as you open the door. A part of you wants to close the door, lock it, and pretend you’ve been dreaming since you opened the laptop this evening. Another, slightly larger part wants you to go out, and see what’s happening. Aided only by the light of the nearby gas station, you see two silhouettes, male, wearing odd clothes considering they’re battling it out with short white swords in a trailer park at eleven fifty at night. You don’t even get close enough to see their faces when a stone crunches under your foot, and one of the men’s faces look to you. A bolt of terror passes through you, but before you can react, a blade is thrown near your head, and the other man – wearing a suit, a coat, and a tie – presses his fingers to your forehead.

Then, it’s dark.

* * *

When you wake, your limbs are at odd angles, face cold, and mushed into the ground, mud wet on your face and smelling like fresh herbs. It’s dark, still – the kind of dark that you see right before dawn, when the birds decide to sing for the world to wake – and slowly, you tell your body to move, your limbs screaming from whatever it has happened to you. You remember approaching the two men who had been fighting, being touched, and then, nothing.

“Ah cannae believe yoo've dain thes, Fergus, efter aw we've dain!” A woman’s voice screeched, louder than the birds, her accent thicker than anything you’ve ever heard in your life. It’s English, yes, but it’s hard to focus over all the butchered vowels that are strange to your American-born ears. “– aw we've bin ben! Aam th' mammy ay yer bairn, an' ye - ye tak' a mistress since day th’ first day!”

When your eyes focus in the dark, you see a woman with unruly hair the colour of fire on the horizon, and from what light spilled over the hills, you could see a similar fury to match that hair of hers. She stormed off, her old dress billowing over her feet, a knapsack over her shoulder, running away from wherever it was where you were. _Where you were._ Your blood ran cold. There were no hills, where you lived, and there certainly was no spikey purple flowers that grew this, that, and every edgeways over the grass, and there certainly was no people who spoke like that.

Whatever that man had done to you, it wasn’t good.

“__________?” A familiar, albeit foreign voice asked, your name strange on their lips. When you looked up, your heart stuttered, your words failed. “Lassie, whit ar’ ye doing doon there?”

You’d seen this exact face two months ago, and not a day after you’d left him alone in the park for your askew coffee date. Some things had changed – he looked a little… _younger_ , eyes wider, frown lines less prominent on his face. Even though he’s been arguing with the other woman, he looks at you so tender, it’s almost strange, considering how he’d last looked at you before. It isn’t until you see what he’s wearing, that you realise something very unnatural has happened, and instead of going through time the usual way ( _forwards, gradually_ ), you’ve been thrust the other way ( _backwards, painfully_ ).

“I – I don’t know,” you whisper, groaning as you go to stand. “What year is it?”

He chuckles, arms steadying you as you waver on your feet. “Ye say such strange things, _______, when yoo've bin drinkin...it’s a body year nigh ay th' century.” He brushes the dirt from your shoulders, and sighs, “Dornt tell me yoo've forgotten th' years spent wi' me warmin' th' sheets, hen.”

Your eyes widen. “I – Crowley, that – she’s your wife!”

He raises an eyebrow. “I'll have some’ah whit you've bin drinkin’, lassie.” He chuckles, knocking a final part of mud from your shapeless nightdress. Had you really time travelled _in your nightie_? “Ye – m’name is Fergus – an' och aye, she is mah wife. Don’t ye rememb’r aw those nights hidin' from ’er?” He motions to the cottage where you’re nearby to, and adds. “Come in. You’ll catch yer death in ‘at, lassie.”

Slowly, you will yourself to move beside him, walking toward the house. It’s a nice place, and even though it’s small, it’s nothing you’d be able to afford to live in with your current salary and savings. It has a thatched roof, the brickwork is beautiful, the door thick and heavy like a barrel that you’ve seen people make scotch in. Inside, the house is lovely, and lit and heated by a fireplace barely living through the frigid air. Naively, you go to it, hands extended to warm yourself.

Fergus chuckles at that, and busies himself at the other end of the room. You notice there’s two beds in the antipodes of the inside, and that he’s sitting in a handmade chair that rocks, hands busy at work with material and a needle.

“C–Fergus,” you correct yourself, his dark green eyes focusing on you, and not the stitching in his hands, “What am I to you?” You ask, voice soft. “Your wife –,”

He sighs, heavily. You see crowfeet lines mark in the side of his eyes, his face downcast. “She knows abit us...has dain, for a while, now.” He places the neat sewing he’s working on aside, and rests his hands to hold his forehead, like Atlas holds the world. “She has aye bin a strong-willed, loch me…but we're nae a match.”

You frown, piecing things together, “Fergus, where’s your child?” 

“Nae loch ye an' me.” His eyes are so sad, and if you didn’t know any better that this wasn’t the same person you met two months ago, you’d even go to him, console him. You sure did work minimum wage, but that didn’t make you a heartless b-witch. “I've gone an’ made a mess ay everythin' I’ve ever tooched…”

Your heart wrenches, but still, when you stand, considerably warmer than waking up on the glens of Scotland near naked, you motion to the door. “I’m sorry, I really am…but I need to, ah,” you motion to your bladder below your belly, and the older man nods, understanding. “Thank you.”

“Ye know where th’ lavvy is, lass.” He motions toward a small building across the way, and closes the door behind you to make your way.

But you don’t make it to the outhouse, instead, a familiar-scented hand grasping your arm and wrenching you out of view from the open shutters of the shieling where 15th Century Crowley-not-Crowley is inside. But when you go to fight your assailant, you see the face you had just parted with not fifteen seconds beforehand. But this time, you know it’s not the other one, Fergus. It’s Crowley.

“What – can this day get any weirder?” You hiss at him, trying to get out of his arms.

He nods. “Yeah. Wait about four seconds, darling.” You huff, complying, but internally agree. Because just like you’ve seen another Crowley, there, coming from the edge of the forest, is another you. She has slightly longer hair, braided nicely, and wears a dress like the one Fergus’s wife wore. She glances left, right, and seeing nobody was there, makes way to enter Fergus’s house. “You owe me money.”

You growl, turning to him. “I owe you nothing!” you push against his chest, infuriated at how calmly he’s taking your _Alice in Wonderland_ of a day.  “You – you owe me an explanation. How did I – why are we –,” your anger is cut short when you see the figure of Fergus’s wife approaching, her fiery hair a warning across the morning sky. You’d think nothing of it, except, in her hands is a dagger, glinting in the early air of the day, and a murderous look upon her face. You cover your mouth with your hands, knowing what she will find when she enters her home. “Oh my g–,” you stammer, turning toward Crowley, holding your hands on your ears to block out the homicidal noises.

“__________,” he says your name with urgency.

Holding you close to his chest, Crowley moves through something dark, like a gate. A portal? You didn’t see, your eyes were closed, but when your eyes open once more, you’re not in Scotland, hiding outside an old stone house that another __________ has just been murdered in. You’re on the steps to your caravan, and sitting there, you shake. It’s warm out, and you’re not sure why you’re like this until Crowley places a blanket over your shoulders. _Shock_.

“__________,” he says again, and it’s only this time you realise that you’re not alone with one another. One another being, another pair of yourselves. Before you, are two men in plaid, and a man who you think you’ve seen before. “Hello, boys…”

You’re silent as they share words that make barely any sense or understanding over the static and numbness that fills your ears and that which lays between them. It’s only when you look to the blue-eyed man wearing a suit, coat, and tie which you confirm that this isn’t a normal experience. Because he’s the one who touched you, and made you go to the past in the first place.

“Can someone – explain _this_ ,” you motion gently to the air surrounding you, “to me?”

“Chronokinesis,” the man with the tie responds.

“Cas made you time-travel,” The shorter-haired man interrupted the fancy story, and added, “From what I hear, it was an accident. You’re okay.” The unspoken addition to that sentence is, _at least, from what we can see_. “Crowley got you in time, I hear.”

You blink. “This – this is normal, for you all…?” you question, mouth agape. “I saw myself being murdered by his wife in 1699, and its –,” you can’t blink the image of Fergus from behind your eyes, the way he moved so smoothly, like silk on lace, but you also can’t rid your ears of the sounds of the – “if this is what being a soulmate is, I don’t want it.”

The bow-legged man raised his eyebrows. “Soulmate? Didn’t think the demon King of Hell had –,”

“D-demon?” you whisper.

“ _Dean_ ,” the longer-haired man interrupted, seeing your expression. He sounds hesitantly nice, and glancing to the man beside you, Ferg-Crowley, you wonder what his relationship is to this trio of strange people. “– Crowley, is there anything else we can do for you…before we leave you two to work out whatever just happened to you?”

“King of Hell…?” you breathe. “What?”

Cas puts a hand on both boys, and with a blink of an eye, all three are gone before they can answer you. Crowley scratches absently at his facial scruff, the blanket falling from your shoulders. You sit in silence for what seems like hours, but really, from the way the sun is spilling over the trailer park, awakening life back to this small, dreary town, it’s only minutes.

“You’re a demon?” you ask him, glancing to the face you’ve seen a lot of, of late.

He nods. “Yeah. Haven’t always been…you knew me, before.” He looks sadly into his hands, which sit like apples abandoned in his lap, and then to you, “Every thirty years, you come back to me, always with the name __________, always with your face, with your voice, with your –,” his voice chokes up, and you swear that there’s a glint of moisture in the corner of his eyes. “And you always die beside me.”

Your mouth gapes, words lost for a moment. “Are you talking about…reincarnation?” Crowley nods. “Wait. I don’t – I never signed up for this, I just wanted to find someone to buy a dog with, move into my first house with, call my family…” you wipe a tear from your eye now, feeling as sad as Crowley looked. “That knife, your wife used – do you think it did something to my soul?”

From a bag on his side, he withdraws a dagger, old and worn, but still as wicked sharp as you last saw it, when it was in the hand of his spouse from three hundred years ago. On the hilt, is etched, _adelante, morte_. But on the blade, there is a catch on the cannelure, a sharp triangle of metal missing.

“Is that Latin?” you frown, staying a safe distance away from your past-life’s murder weapon.

Crowley shakes his head. “Gaelic,” he tells you, and places it back in the bag. “It says, _onward, death_.” He chuckles. “Might have been cursed, and terribly looked after, as the chip might have only partially severed your –,”

Just hearing that, you gather the sides of the blanket that had fallen, and adjust them so you’re hidden from sight. Gone. Like a babe craving the seclusion of the womb after leaving it. The voice of your soulmate, so tantalisingly beautiful stops as you’re hidden, and while hidden, tears start falling from your eyes.

“Darling?”

You poke your head out from the blanket, gazing up at his face. As the morning settles over the lonely, little town you’ve been in for so much of your life, working, saving, sleeping, working some more, you allow your eyes to linger, focus on Crowley. The way his eyes watch yours, softer than the snarl he gave the trio of oddballs earlier. The way his hair on his face is slowly growing into a beard, now a soft covering over his facial features. How his hands are empty, and in your hands, you feel a want, a _need_ to place yours in his.

You wouldn’t have been able to see this clearly months before meeting him. It’s only fair that with the clarity that came with finding your soulmate that you study the person you’re destined to be with.

“How many times have you met me?” you ask him, voice soft. “How many __________’s?”

“You’re the eleventh,” Crowley mutters, sighing deeply.

You’re sitting in a trailer park, beside the demon king of hell, considering the difficulties of what just happened to you, and what has happened to the pair of you over the last three hundred years. _Eleven reincarnations of you_. That’s almost enough to give you a T.A.R.D.I.S. and a popular timeslot on the BBC. And sitting there, on the steps to the caravan you’ve lived, breathed, studied, and lived through so far, you have an idea.

“If it’s all right with you,” you tell him, voice low, reserved, “I’m very happy just being number eleven.” He cocks an eyebrow, and you add, “You said that dagger had done something to me, severed my –,”

“Soul.” Crowley nods, “It’s not unheard of, but…I think I know someone who can help us out with this predicament. He owes me a favour.” 

* * *

Everyone has someone. Your someone, was, in fact, the King of Hell, ruler of the underworld, the soulmate to ten other reincarnations of yourself throughout history. Soulmates were a thing, and while it was good for the 99% of people who had their shit together, you were proudly human. The 1% who still worked at the diner, despite being the domestic partner to the endless wealth and power of that of the ruler of Hell.

You’re fixed. The archangel who fixed you was disgruntled, snappy, but gets the job done. There will never be a twelfth __________. Just you, and Crowley.

With your degree completed, you managed to secure a job as an interpreter of ancient historical texts at the university in a flourishing town by the seaside, and with your savings You upgraded your living situation to live in a small house, with a garden out the front and a basement at the bottom (Crowley’s favourite haunt). While it was sad to leave your life in the sad, dead-end job and the small, tired town, it really wasn’t, and you were glad to leave _Bean There, Donut That_ behind.

Life just isn’t that shitty. It’s all a little window that goes very slowly for the person living it, because life isn’t a television show which cuts to the action. You need to live the little parts. Make your hard work into the montage that the viewers cherish. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, yes, but nothing really is. It’s like the Beatles said, _all you need is love_ – except, perhaps, food, oxygen, and a place to call your own.

And with your new life with Crowley, you had all of that.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any requests, find me on Tumblr at @susiephalange, or [@phalangewrites](https://phalangewrites.tumblr.com/request_conditions) ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿


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